5 Favourite Places to Eat in Vietnam
Vietnam is one of my favourite countries to visit in Southeast Asia. Aside from the great scenery and the very good value accommodation options, what keeps me going back is the food. Not just the fresh and healthy traditional Vietnamese food, but the excellent quality and variety of all the other cuisines on offer.
I don’t profess to be a gourmet traveller, but I’m something of a foodie and always willing to try something new. Here are the five places where I always try to eat when I’m in Vietnam.
Hoang Cuisine, Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi
Whenever I’m in Hanoi with someone who hasn’t been there before, the first place I take them to for an introduction to Vietnamese food is Hoang Cuisine on Hang Buom street in the Old Quarter. They have a very extensive menu featuring most of the popular Vietnamese dishes
You won’t see many locals in Hoang Cuisine. It caters almost entirely to tourists – but Hoang Cuisine is not like other restaurants that rely on the tourist trade. The food is genuine Vietnamese food, the service is very good (all of the servers speak good English) and it’s not over-priced.
Three clues that Hoang Cuisine doesn’t cater much to the local trade are the number of vegetarian options on the menu (Vietnamese dishes feature a lot of fresh vegetables and herbs, but not many Vietnamese are vegetarians), they cater for gluten-free diets, and the excellent drinks menu is clearly targeted at western travellers.
The service staff are a very friendly bunch and they will show you how to eat the food the Vietnamese way. If you’ve not tried Vietnamese pancakes before, then this is the place to do it. I’m told that people rave about their egg coffee, but I’m a traditionalist as far as my coffee is concerned, so that’s one item on the menu that I haven’t tried.
I don’t normally eat fried food but I can’t resist their fried spring rolls – they are so tasty. The non-fried variety is good too – you can taste the freshness of the ingredients. I love their vegetarian curry too, and the sweet and sour chicken. Their bun cha (Vietnamese meatballs) is very good if you eat pork.
The pho restaurants in Hanoi’s Old Quarter
Hanoi is also home to my favourite pho restaurants. For those not familiar with Vietnamese food, pho is the country’s traditional beef noodle soup. You will surely have seen pho restaurants in shopping malls wherever you live, but nothing beats the taste of a freshly made bowl of pho in Hanoi, which is where this dish originated.
There are too many pho restaurants that I like for me to name them because you’ll find them on almost every street in Hanoi, and the ones in the Old Quarter have been around for a long time, catering to both locals and visitors.
Although we westerners call it soup or broth, don’t think of pho as a starter to a meal. A big bowl of pho is a meal in itself. The best pho will have thinly sliced beef that is tender and not fatty or grisly. It will be accompanied by rice noodles, bean sprouts, sliced onions, chopped spring onion, basil and coriander leaves.
Some places will serve the pho with the bean sprouts and other accompaniments in the soup, whilst others will serve those ingredients on the side. Aside from the quality of the beef, what makes a good pho is the flavour of the spiced soup. Every restaurant has its own recipe for the soup with some including ginger, whilst others use spices like cinnamon, cloves, star anise or black cardamom.
You’ll need to try pho in quite a few different places to find the one you like best. Pho can be savoury, spicy, sour, sweet or smoky, or a combination of all of those things. You can buy pho from street stalls as well (you’ll see the locals sitting on little plastic stools on the sidewalk around them) but the restaurants with tables and chairs are a better choice for travellers because those are subjected to hygiene checks by the local health authorities.
Hoi An’s riverside restaurants
Hoi An on Vietnam’s central coast is one of the most popular destinations in the country for older travellers because of its relaxed atmosphere, colonial architecture, bicycle tours and the large number of restaurants serving some of the best quality food that you’ll find anywhere in Indo-China.
It’s known to be a haven for foodies because the food here is not just Vietnamese but a mix of cuisines that have been influenced by the Chinese and Japanese settlers that lived here many centuries ago, and also the Portuguese, Dutch and Indian traders that used to visit this ancient seaport.
Alongside the river that runs through the town there are many open-air restaurants with menus that reflect the diverse background of the Hoi An population, as well as those with international menus catering for almost every taste possible.
There are also many enclosed fine-dining restaurants that are on a par with places in London or New York, but at a much cheaper price, and every second restaurant in Hoi An seems to run a cooking school. So this is the perfect destination for those interested in learning how to cook Vietnamese food.
The Phu Quoc night markets
Phu Quoc island is not my favourite destination in Vietnam. For me it’s just too touristy with too many people there on package tours from Europe. But I do like the atmosphere of the two night markets in Duong Dong. They are nowhere near as classy as being riverside in Hoi An, but nevertheless a very relaxing outdoor eating experience.
What sets the Phu Quoc night markets aside from other places is the range of fresh seafood available. Much of it is kept live in big tanks, so you can choose what you want to eat from the tanks, have it weighed, and then the restaurant will cook it for you.
There are two night markets in Duong Dong. The original one is behind Dinh Cau beach near the Dinh Cau temple, and there’s a newer one on Bach Dang street. They are within walking distance of each other. There is a larger selection of eating places in the Dinh Cau market, and it tends to be the busier of the two.
If you are staying in a self-catering beach house in Phu Quoc (as I always do – I hate the big cookie-cutter hotels) then head down to the wet market in Duong Dong near the port where the fishing boats unload their catches. Get there early in the morning, and you’ll be able to buy freshest seafood in Vietnam.
The Highlands Coffee chain
Vietnam’s largest home-grown coffee chain is called Highlands Coffee and it serves the best coffee in Vietnam. Its coffee is on a par with Costa Coffee in the UK and is far superior to the Starbucks offerings from the US. I go there not just to have coffee but to eat lunch as well.
Highlands Coffee has the best banh mi in Vietnam. That’s their traditional French baguette with grilled pork, shredded chicken or tuna as a filling, along with fresh salad vegetables. It’s tasty and healthy and I virtually live on those for lunch when I’m in Vietnam.
Those are my five favourite places to eat whenever I’m in Vietnam, but there are many more excellent restaurants all over the country that will make any food lover’s visit to Vietnam a rewarding one.
Both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City offer many fine dining options as well, and Danang, Nha Trang and Hue are all catching up on that front too. I enjoy a fine dining experience once in a while, but for most of the time I’m in Vietnam banh mi and pho are all I need.
Header image: © Ioana Catalina
